MSL Curiosity update thread

Uggh. I knew it would be a let down. I swear scientists are doing themselves no favors whatsoever by hyping boring finds--especially in this increasingly anti-science world. I love science and I'm just about to the point where I'll stop believing them.

So, what have been the big findings of Curiosity thus far? Besides the awesome landing, of course. Can anyone sum up?

Haha, the things been there like a month? They're still commissioning systems.

It's been on the surface since August 6. That's 4 months. A long time, yet they just finished analyzing their first soil sample. At this rate, they'll have their second soil sample analyzed 4 more months from now and the mission will be half over!

I'm amazed that the spin up period of this mission is longer than the total time of some previous missions. Then we had the last two rovers go from 90 days to YEARS, so I guess that built a lot of confidence for this mission.

The earlier rovers were solar powered. No one knew if they'd survive a Martian winter with functional solar panels so they had to rush get everything done before winter arrived.

All this talk of a habitable situation on Mars in the past... Wouldn't this become a new factor in the drake equation? The goldilocks zone is not a fixed zone at all and may have less importance on the star the planet is orbiting, depending on the time we find the planet. If the sun was 70% its current energy output in the past that Mars was "more" habitable, how did Mars support a liquid environment and an atmosphere to sustain it? Less heat and energy from the sun == a more hospitable Mars?

Perhaps the "goldilocks" zone has less of an impact and a much, much more important consideration is the actual atmospheres of the planets themselves. The fact that Mercury can have ice is an interesting finding when you consider it's impossible for Venus to have ice when you consider their proximity to the sun.

Certainty makes me take a step back and consider what we're doing to our planet's atmosphere.

All this talk of a habitable situation on Mars in the past... Wouldn't this become a new factor in the drake equation?

Somewhat yes, but it wouldn't have been habitable for long enough to evolve intelligent life. Unless there's other ways to evolve intelligent life faster than the way we did it that have high likelihood.

It had a thicker atmosphere of mostly CO2. Much of that was lost to chemical reactions and the solar wind. The record highs recorded on Mars these days are >0 C, so it could have been miserable by Earth standards yet still survivable for life that exists today on Earth.

All this talk of a habitable situation on Mars in the past... Wouldn't this become a new factor in the drake equation?

Somewhat yes, but it wouldn't have been habitable for long enough to evolve intelligent life. Unless there's other ways to evolve intelligent life faster than the way we did it that have high likelihood.

Forget intelligence, I would be happy with multi-cellular life. The hardware on Mars right now could potentially find a macroscopic fossil, assuming there is one to find.

I watched the HD version of the landing, I .. have the weirdest (SCIENCE) boner.

There are definite parallels to watching it and watching the Apollo moon landings, we can only hope that in a few years* we'll be watching an astronaut step onto the surface of mars on our google glass/iphone 8 _live_**

I don't think there is anything 6 light seconds from Earth, maybe a solar observational probe.

The first Earth-Solar Lagrange point (where most solar observational probes are located) is indeed about 5 light seconds from Earth (1.5 million kilometers...light travels 300,000 km/s, so 5 seconds one way).

air and ground temperatureTwo interesting things in that.The ground temperature plot shows clearly, when the ground type and thus the thermal inertia changes.

NASA wrote:

The higher thermal inertia of this area was predicted from orbital infrared measurements...

Neat.

The second interesting thing is that the temperature high point was around 0° C. Almost comfortable. With a bit more atmosphere to retain that heat better...Speaking of witch, they found better evidence that Mars had more atmosphere in the distant past.

I know that this is technically the wrong thread, but there's an article about discoveries by Opportunity in the NY Times. A rock that Opportunity recently studied shows better evidence of near-neutral pH water than previous examples:

New York Times wrote:

The Opportunity has already found many signs of flowing water in Mars’s ancient past, but of very acidic water. “In fact, what Opportunity has mostly discovered evidence for in the past was sulfuric acid on Mars,” Dr. Squyres said... “This is water you could drink,” Dr. Squyres said. “This is water that was probably much more favorable in its chemistry, in its pH, in its level of acidity, for things like prebiotic chemistry, the kind of chemistry that could lead to the origin of life.”

I believe that the pH of the water is inferred from the composition of the rock and, also, perhaps from the salts that are deposited.

JPL wrote:

"What's so special about Esperance [the rock] is that there was enough water not only for reactions that produced clay minerals, but also enough to flush out ions set loose by those reactions, so that Opportunity can clearly see the alteration," said Scott McLennan of the State University of New York, Stony Brook, a long-term planner for Opportunity's science team.

This rock's composition is unlike any other Opportunity has investigated during nine years on Mars -- higher in aluminum and silica, lower in calcium and iron.

All this talk of a habitable situation on Mars in the past... Wouldn't this become a new factor in the drake equation? The goldilocks zone is not a fixed zone at all and may have less importance on the star the planet is orbiting, depending on the time we find the planet. If the sun was 70% its current energy output in the past that Mars was "more" habitable, how did Mars support a liquid environment and an atmosphere to sustain it? Less heat and energy from the sun == a more hospitable Mars?

Perhaps the "goldilocks" zone has less of an impact and a much, much more important consideration is the actual atmospheres of the planets themselves. The fact that Mercury can have ice is an interesting finding when you consider it's impossible for Venus to have ice when you consider their proximity to the sun.

Certainty makes me take a step back and consider what we're doing to our planet's atmosphere.

Mars’ goldilocks days probably had more to do with its magnetosphere, or more specifically its fission-driven internal dynamo, than its atmosphere. When the nuclear material ran out the protective field collapsed and the solar wind scoured away Mars’ atmosphere. Probably.

Perhaps we should think about injecting fissionable material into Earth’s core.